Art on the Streets, a new documentary created by design historian Harriet Atkinson and filmmaker Jane Dibblin, narrated by Michael Rosen, animated by Kate Bilbow, edited by Hugh Hartford and made with support from Four Corners trainees, is launching soon.
The film – made during Harriet Atkinson’s AHRC project ‘The Materialisation of Persuasion’ – explores art’s role in providing a voice, a platform and a meeting point in the midst of conflict. The film focuses on For Liberty, an exhibition mounted in 1943 in the bombed-out John Lewis department store on London’s Oxford Street. Created by the anti-fascist artists’ collective, Artists International Association, this audacious show aimed to demonstrate the values people were fighting for. Central to the exhibition were many artists who had recently arrived in Britain having fled the Nazi threat. The film follows some of the artists who took part, including Oskar Kokoschka, Peter Laszlo Peri, Betty Rea and designer F. H. K. Henrion.
Art on the Streets features interviews with historians Harriet Atkinson, Adrian Shaughnessy, and Gillian Whiteley; and contributing artists’ family members Peter Peri, Will Rea and Max Henrion. It also draws heavily on brilliant archival film and photographs from University of Brighton’s internationally acclaimed Design Archives, Screen Archives South East, Imperial War Museum, Tate, Marx Memorial Library, Henry Moore Institute and private collections.
The team behind Art on the Streets:
Narrator: Michael Rosen
Directors: Dr Harriet Atkinson & Jane Dibblin
Editor: Hugh Hartford, Banyak Films
Animation: Kate Bilbow
Writers: Dr Harriet Atkinson & Jane Dibblin
Research: Dr Harriet Atkinson
Producers: Jane Dibblin & Carla Mitchell, Four Corners
Production Assistant: Giacomo Baraldi
Director of Photography: Elena Reimeryte
Assistant Director of Photography: Nicholas D. Celano
For further information please contact Carla Mitchell, Artistic Development Director carla@fourcornersfilm.co.uk
https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/
Harriet Atkinson is on Twitter @HRAtkinson1 or on email at h.atkinson2@brighton.ac.uk.
